


To teach, to learn

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, legendarium ladies april, parental figures, positive female friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Aredhel taught Idril something and one time Idril taught Aredhel something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To teach, to learn

_i._

She binds up Itarillë’s frostbitten feet, changing the bandages as the little girl cries out for her dead mother, whispering words of comfort to her to little effect. Irissë grits her teeth and tries to work as quickly as she can, to expose as little skin to the harsh icy air as possible, as the tears freeze on both their faces. 

Turukáno had wanted to do it, had been loath to let go of Itarillë, had never wanted her out of his sight, again. But Irissë had insisted that he sleep, after being given something hot to drink following his own plunge into the ice water, disturbed by her brother’s ragged breaths and uncontrollable shaking. (She had given him over to the care of Artanis and Findaráto several hours ago, hoping that between the two of them they could calm him as well as get him warm.)

“Sssh” she says to Itarillë, her own voice breaking on a sob as she ties up the last bandage as securely as she can with clumsy, chilled fingers. “Hush, hush, little one.” She pulls Itarillë’s boots back on, and gathers the little girl close to her chest, wrapping her fur cloak around both of them. “Hush, you must not despair. See?” Irissë points overhead, to where ribbons and curtains of vivid red and green light are splashed across the sky, brighter even than Varda’s stars. “See? The Valar have lit our way. There is a path for us to take. All we need to do is follow it.” 

(Irissë does not truly believe this; she does not know what the lights are but she is reasonable certain that the Valar did not send them, that they are not watching over the lost ones on the Ice. But she is holding her niece, trembling with cold and wracking sobs, to her chest and the girl has just lost her mother and Irissë has lost her best friend, and she wants to scream but she knows she cannot, knows that the lies will be the only thing to ease the heart of a grief-stricken child.)

Itarillë stops crying for moment, curious. She peers out from Irissë’s cloak with owl-like eyes, huge and red-rimmed from crying and from the biting cold. “Really?”

“Yes” says Irissë, kissing Itarillë’s hair, snowflakes melting against her lips. “We will make it, and your mother will be so proud of you.”  _Elenwë, forgive me. You should not have died. It should have been me, if anyone, you have a family, it should have been me falling through the Ice and choking as the frozen water filled my lungs…_ she shakes her head to clear it of the horrible thought, for such things cannot help anyone now. 

“Do you promise?”

Irissë hesitates for just a moment, but her voice, when it comes, is as steady as she can make it. “Yes. Yes, I promise.”

Itarillë relaxes in her arms, just a little. 

_ii._

“My father sent me to try to get you dressed and ready to meet his guests” says Irissë, looking down at the child curled up in the corner with a blanket pulled over her head with some sympathy. “Come on, you’ll have a fun evening, I promise. There will be honey cakes and music and you can dance, if you like.”

“But I don’t want to dance” says Itarillë, turning her tear-stained face away. “I don’t want to meet any of the Sindarin lords and ladies. I just want to stay here.”

“Come on” says Irissë, with a sigh. “I know you don’t want to, but it would make  _both_  our fathers very happy to see you there. And the littlest princess of our people simply must help to greet the guests. The house of Ñolofinwë isn’t complete without you! Why, I bet they came all this way just hoping to meet you.”

Itarillë pulls the blanket off her head, peering up at Irissë suspiciously. She thinks for a moment, then says in a small, shy voice, “will you braid my hair, just like yours?”

Irissë smiles. “Why, of course I will, little one.”

Later, Irissë watches her niece dancing with everyone in the long hall, her eyes sparkling as she spins, her hair bright in the lamplight. She thinks, with a pang, of Elenwë when they had talked and laughed in the ballrooms of Tirion, so long ago.  _The light had been different then and the walls had been crystal and jewels, glass and gold, not hastily erected timbers, but still there is something of her mother to Itarillë, with her swinging braid of golden hair and her quick steps, her peals of laughter…_  Irissë spots Turukáno standing by the wall as he watches his daughter dance, a true smile on his face for the first time in longer than she cares to remember. 

“I don’t know how you managed it” he says, when she is at his side.

“Neither do I” confesses Irissë. 

“Well whatever you did, I thank you for it” Turukáno says, taking her hand and squeezing it. “Truly, I think you’re the best thing for her, here.”

“I hope so” Irissë says, squeezing her brother’s hand back, and she is relieved to find it warm for once. “I hope so.”

 

_iii._

Irissë teaches Itarillë to swim on the brief summers days when the sun steals a little of winter’s chill and the mists part for a time, leaving the waters of Lake Mithrim sparkling with bright little ripples. The shock of the cold against their skin makes their flesh pucker in goose-pimples, forced indrawn breaths, but Itarillë is determined to learn, and she will not let Irissë out of her promise.

They do not speak of why; the serious set of Itarillë’s face is enough, her frown of resolve.

They splash in the shallows at first, with Irissë standing on the stony bottom of the lake holding her niece’s skinny, rapidly growing limbs while she practices her strokes and her breathing. 

They move out into the lake when she gets good at it, out of their depth, swimming in circles that grow a little wider every day. When they leave the water they are breathless with cold, ringing out their hair and rubbing warmth into chilled fingers and toes. Itarillë’s reddened cheeks glow with pride.

Turukáno stands on the bank all the while, just watching, his arms folded and tension in his shoulders. In the water, they are too far away to see the expressions that flit across his face. 

 

_iv._

They learn to fight with wooden staves first, and then with wooden swords, then with steel. Irissë knows a little, of what she learned in Tirion when it seemed as though the unrest would boil into violence every day, but she is still learning herself.

“Maybe someone else would be a better teacher” she suggests to Itarillë one day. “Your father or Findekáno, or even Laurefindil, or I could ask - ”

But Itarillë is shaking her head determinedly. “I want _you_  to teach me.”

And so Irissë does, in between practicing with her brothers. The two of them are a good match for each other, though Irissë is physically stronger in her arms and upper body, and still has a few inches of height on Itarillë.  _But she’ll be grown soon_ , Irissë thinks.  _She may be taller than me within the next few years._  And Itarillë is nimble and quick, lighter on her feet than Irissë remembered being herself at that age. 

 _Elenwë, if you had lived, would you have had to learn to fight too?_ The thought crosses Irissë’s mind often.

They spar with bare feet and their hair braided back in the sandpit set aside as a training ground on their side of the lake, dressed in light leathers and wide, loose breaches, the sleeves of their tunics rolled back. The sun is warm on their necks, and both soon tan golden brown even in these pale, fleeting summers.

Itarillë, covered in bruises but grinning triumphantly, knocks Irissë into the dust for the third time that day, the wooden sword flying from her fingers. Findekáno cheers his niece from the sideline and laughs as Irissë shoots him a scowl, but truly she is just as proud of her young pupil.

They move onto steel the next day.

Itarillë, as they leave the lake for the lands to the south and east, is gifted a beautiful jewel-inlaid blade - made lighter and slimmer to fit her delicate hands, smaller than Irissë’s - and a shirt of finely-forged mail wrought as silver fish’s scales as a gift of parting and goodwill from the house of Fëanáro. 

Irissë sees her niece practicing alone with her new arms later, lithe and graceful, as though she is dancing. 

Irissë thinks back to the battle of the Lammoth, and hopes that the sword and mail will never have to see any use.

 

_v._

“Your father” says Aredhel as they walk the clifftop at Nevrast together, “takes himself far too seriously sometimes. Turno can retreat inside himself, if you see what I mean. He doesn’t mean anything by it, it’s just how he is.”

“Really?” asks Idril, sweeping away a curtain of golden hair that has blown across her face in the stiff sea breeze. “I wasn’t sure. I thought he was just being cold with me, and I didn’t know what I’d done.”

“I wouldn’t worry” says Aredhel. She sighs. “Since we lost your mother, he gets like this sometimes. It’s not your fault.” They paused, looking out over the setting sun lighting the sea, where the waves lapped at the bay far below. “You must be patient with him.” She turns to Idril. “I know my brother very well, and I also know that he loves you more than anything else in this world.”

Idril smiles, sadly. “I know.”

They stand in silence for a little while longer. “I…” says Idril at last, and then she stops. “I don’t remember my mother that well” she confesses at last, and the words sound as though each one is an effort. “I mean, I remember her face, her voice, but I only wish I could have known her as an adult. It’s different when you’re a child, and the way she - ” she breaks off, her voice choked with sudden tears. Her eyes are bright with them, and she wipes them away with a hasty thumb. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why…”

Aredhel says nothing, but merely takes Idril in her arms, holding her close to her chest and stroking her hair as the damp sea wind rises around them. After a while Idril draws back. “Could you tell me more about her?” she asks. “I mean, I could ask Atya, but I’m afraid it will only upset him…” 

But Aredhel is already nodding, steeling herself not to cry.  _Itarillë needs this. She deserves this._  “Of course, for Elenwë was my… she was my dearest friend. What would you like to know?”

“Um…” Idril thinks for a moment. “Everything, really, I suppose. Start at the beginning, please?”

Aredhel smiles a watery smile. “That I can certainly do.”

They carry on along the cliff top, talking until the sun sets over the sea.

They return the next day, and the next, and talk some more, memories of a life that could have been pouring forth in words. 

It is not enough, not  _nearly_  enough, but it is something.

 

_vi._

Aredhel sits at the gable window of the house in Nan Elmoth, looking out into the dark forest. With a sigh, she closes the curtains and goes to replace the candle which has burned down to nothing on the table beside her, a puff of smoke curling up to the ceiling as the flame goes out. 

As she moves to light another, setting it in its holder, she hears a quiet whimpering sound from the cradle in the corner, her son fussing and half-crying out for her. She goes to him, rocking the cradle slowly.  _Hush, little one, my Lómion, my darling boy. Go back to sleep, my little twilight child. May your dreams be filled with light._

He quietens, soon enough, and she is left all alone in the silence once more, with Eöl working late in his forge below. She can see the red glow in the outbuilding, through the window. 

In truth, she is glad of it, glad that he is sure to be working on a project and thus distracted for the quiet, dark hours. Glad that he is unlikely to come to her bed tonight.

She thinks of Idril in those quiet nights, when the candle burns down and she watches the flame flicker in the gloom and the shadows dance. Her mind goes back to a day on the bright greensward in Gondolin, with the wind lifting their hair, the mountain air fresh and cool on her face. 

_Idril had been laughing at a joke Aredhel could no longer remember, and then she had gone quiet, falling into contemplation as she sometimes did. Her moods were wont to change like the weather, just as Elenwë’s had._

_“I knew, you know” she had said, looking at Aredhel. “When you told me that the lights in the sky on the Ice were to lead us to these lands. I knew it was a lie. Maybe not then, but at some point I realised.”  
_

_“You did?”  
_

_Idril had nodded._

_“I’m sorry for lying to you” Aredhel had said. “You were so small and cold and we were so lost and I didn’t know what else to do - ”_

_“Hush” Idril had said, stilling her apologies. “I do not blame you. I probably would have done the same. But I think…” she had smiled a little then, looking up at Aredhel. “I think you were at least a little right. I think that the lights were leading us to the new lands.”_

_“But the Valar did not make them, nor leave us any sign.”_

_“No. But we ascribed meaning to the lights ourselves. And I think that is what hope is, or what it’s supposed to be, perhaps. Something you have to make for yourself.”_

_Aredhel had thought about this for a while as she looked about the bright city square. She had thought of her brother, then. Had he made this place, spun it out of light itself as much as stone and glass and mortar, as his hope? “I think you are right, perhaps. You are much wiser than me, I fear.” she had said at last with a grin, and Idril had laughed too._

Aredhel lets that long ago conversation, that bright day, run through her head often, as she looks between the candle and the light in the forge window and her son’s beloved, sleeping face.  _Itarillë, I hope you and Turukáno have enough light. I hope you have more hope than I._


End file.
